Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Education Wars: Eli Broad's Bullshit

More bribery money to get states to lengthen the school year, so that teachers work like 9-5 drones, 12 months a year, with no time off, which of course has nothing to do with the reality of teaching:

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has awarded $1.5 million to the National Center on Time & Learning to ensure that 1 million American public school students within the next 10 years have access to high-performing public schools that offer internationally competitive academic learning time through longer, modernized school calendars, the foundation and center announced today.

The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) is the leading organization helping public schools across the nation expand academic learning time. NCTL works with local, state and national education leaders to ensure that longer school day and year schedules – which research shows is a core strategy widely used by other nations and many successful U.S. public charter schools to raise student achievement and close achievement gaps – are likely to yield student gains.

"We must stop shortchanging our children. American students receive only a fraction of the academic time of many of their international counterparts. As a nation, we cannot afford to allow our children to be at a competitive disadvantage in the 21st century global economy," said Eli Broad, founder of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which in 2007 provided more than $1.1 million to NCTL's sister organization, Massachusetts 2020. "We are encouraged that a growing number of states and districts are choosing to modernize their school calendars, thanks to the Obama administration, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and the founders of NCTL, Jennifer Davis and Chris Gabrieli."

This what clueless bastards these billionaires are. Continue with the discredited and debunked A Nation at Risk nonsense and screw teachers and kids over more.

So will teachers be paid more? I doubt it despite the claims in the article MORE hours would be a boon for teachers, since their unions would bargain for more money.

Duncan believes teachers should work year round like people in private business, totally ignorant of how absolutely labor intensive teaching is, not to mention their workday will be much longer than it is now. This piece was from last April:

During his visit, Duncan said American schools should be open six days a week, at least 11 months a year, to improve student performance.

"Go ahead and boo me," Duncan told about 400 middle and high school students at a public school in northeast Denver. "I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short and our school year is too short."

"You're competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; 11, 12 months a year," Duncan said.

There is NO evidence our schools are worse than those in China or India. I laugh because those two countries are at the heart of the low-wage sector worldwide.

Duncan is a fucking idiot.

Unions won't even exist if Central Falls, Rhode Island, becomes the national norm.